PHIL Jagielka has tipped a confident Apostolos Vellios to continue creating positives for Everton this season.

The England defender admitted the Greek centre forward’s goal was the only highlight of an otherwise frustrating 3-1 defeat against Chelsea on Saturday.

But Jagielka hopes the 19-year-old will thrive after his second goal of the season, and was further pleased that another new recruit, Royston Drenthe, provided the cross for Vellios’ 81st minute strike.

Everton slumped to 15th in the Premier League table, just two points above rock-bottom Blackburn, as a result of their defeat, and Jags now expects a response against Fulham at Craven Cottage next week.

“There aren’t that many positives but Tolos (Vellios) scoring will breed confidence with him and you know how it is with strikers and goals,” he said.

“That was a positive and Roy (Drenthe) set him up so it’s good for him to get a few minutes as well.

“You can’t give a team like Chelsea a 2-0 head start and hope to get anything out of the game.

“As soon as they were 2-0 up we had to go and chase the game and we got caught with a few too many players up the pitch and they picked us off.

“Maybe we could’ve kept it tight for the last 15 minutes but we knew we had to try and get a goal and put some pressure back on them.

“I don’t think we played particularly badly for the first half but unfortunately a couple of errors of judgement cost us two goals.”

Everton must take on Fulham at their West London bogey ground next Sunday, before facing Chelsea again in the Carling Cup, and then Manchester United at Goodison, and Jagielka accepts it is a daunting run of games.

He said: “It’s massively important we get the defeat out of our system, we’ve said that for a couple of weeks.

“But unfortunately the fixtures list has thrown us some difficult fixtures.

“It will be a tricky couple of games but we will be looking forward to the game at Fulham.”